Burgess, Joseph (1)

an English Wesleyan minister, was born at Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, Aug. 4, 1757. He received a careful training by his father, who belonged to a regiment of horse. Joseph himself joined the regiment at an early age, and was successively trumpeter, paymaster's clerk, quartermaster (1780), and paymaster. His army associations led him into vice and dissipation until 1779, when he was converted under the ministry of William Boothby. Wesley, Burgess's personal acquaintance, received him - into the itinerancy in 1790, and appointed him to Liverpool. He thenceforth labored with faithfulness and diligence, chiefly in the counties of Devon and Cornwall, until 1832, when he became a supernumerary at Plymouth.

He died March 24,1839. He was a man of exalted piety and unwearying generosity, tender, studious, and courteous. Besides contributions to the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, and other periodicals, Burgess published Remarks on the Sacrificial Death of Christ (Penzance, 1826, republished in London). See Wesl. Meth. Mag. 1840, p. 537 sq.; Minutes of the British Conference, 1839; Memoirs of Burgess, by his son, Rev. W. P. Burgess (Lond. 18mo).